Installation

If you want unstable pre-release versions, you can install the awesome-gitAUR package instead but keep in mind that it really is an unstable development version with a different configuration syntax.

Getting Started

Using awesome

To run awesome without a login manager, simply add exec awesome to the startup script of your choice (e.g. ~/.xinitrc.)

If you have problems with some devices (like mounting usbkeys, reading dvds) be sure to read documentation about HAL and PolicyKit. When you do not use a login manager, nothing is automated. In some cases, using exec ck-launch-session awesome can solve your problems. For this to work, you must have the consolekit package installed, otherwise ck-launch-session will be an unrecognised command. See ConsoleKit.

Debug rc.lua using Xephyr

This is my prefered way to debug rc.lua, without breaking my current desktop. I first copy my rc.lua into a new file, rc.lua.new, and modify it as needed. Then, I run new instance of awesome in Xephyr (allows you to run X nested in another X's client window, supplying rc.lua.new as a config file like this:

Big advantage of this approach is that if I break rc.lua.new, I do not break my current awesome desktop (and possibly crash all my X apps, lose all unsaved things and so on...). Once I'm happy with my new settings, I move rc.lua.new to rc.lua and restart awesome. And I can be sure it will work and restarting with new config won't mess up things.

As of July 2011, there is also awmttAUR which provides the above functionality and more.

Themes

Beautiful is a lua library that allows you to theme awesome using an external file, it becomes very easy to dynamically change your whole awesome colours and wallpaper without changing your rc.lua.

The default theme is at /usr/share/awesome/themes/default. Copy it to ~/.config/awesome/themes/default and change theme_path in rc.lua.

Setting up your wallpaper

Beautiful can handle your wallpaper, thus you do not need to set it up in your .xinitrc or .xsession files. This allows you to have a specific wallpaper for each theme. If you take a look at the default theme file you'll see a wallpaper_cmd key, the given command is executed when beautiful.init("path_to_theme_file") is run. You can put here you own command or remove/comment the key if you do not want Beautiful to interfere with your wallpaper business.

For instance, if you use awsetbg to set your wallpaper, you can write in the theme.lua page that you just selected:

Tips & Tricks

Feel free to add any tips or tricks that you would like to pass on to other awesome users.

Use awesome as GNOME's window manager

GNOME has the advantage of being very "ready to use" and integrating. You can set up GNOME to use awesome as the visual interface, but have GNOME work in the background for your pleasure. If you are using GNOME 3, you can simply install the awesome-gnome package, then when logging in with GDM, choose the session type "Awesome GNOME". See the awesome wiki for details.

Expose effect like compiz

Revelation brings up a view of all your open clients; left-clicking a client pops to the first tag that client is visible on and raises/focuses the client. In addition, the Enter key pops to the currently focused client, and Escape aborts.

Dynamic tagging

Eminent is a small lua library that monkey-patches awful to provide you with effortless and quick wmii-style dynamic tagging. Unlike shifty, eminent does not aim to provide a comprehensive tagging system, but tries to make dynamic tagging as simple as possible. In fact, besides importing the eminent library, you do not have to change your rc.lua at all, eminent does all the work for you.

Shifty is an Awesome 3 extension that implements dynamic tagging. It also implements fine client matching configuration allowing YOU to be the master of YOUR desktop only by setting two simple config variables and some keybindings!

Space Invaders

Space Invaders is a demo to show the possibilities of the Awesome Lua API.

Please note that it is no longer included in the Awesome package since the 3.4-rc1 release.

More Widgets in awesome

Widgets in awesome are objects that you can add to any widget-box (statusbars and titlebars), they can provide various information about your system, and are useful for having access to this information, right from your window manager. Widgets are simple to use and offer a great deal of flexibility. -- Source Awesome Wiki: Widgets.

There's a widely used widget library called Wicked (compatible with awesome versions prior to 3.4), that provides more widgets, like MPD widget, CPU usage, memory usage, etc. For more details see the Wicked page.

If you got error messages about add_signal, using connect_signal insteaded.

Note that if you are using conky, you must set it to create its own window instead of using the desktop. To do so, edit ~/.conkyrc to contain:

own_window yes
own_window_transparent yes
own_window_type desktop

Otherwise strange behavior may be observed, such as all windows becoming fully transparent. Note also that since conky will be creating a transparent window on your desktop, any actions defined in awesome's rc.lua for the desktop will not work where conky is.

As of Awesome 3.1, there is built-in pseudo-transparency for wiboxes. To enable it, append 2 hexadecimal digits to the colors in your theme file (~/.config/awesome/themes/default, which is usually a copy of /usr/share/awesome/themes/default), like shown here:

bg_normal = #000000AA

where "AA" is the transparency value.

To change transparency for the actual selected window by pressing Modkey + PageUp/PageDown you can also use tansset-df available through the community package repository and the following modification to your rc.lua:

ImageMagick

You may have problems if you set your wallpaper with imagemagick's display command, it doesn't work well with xcompmgr. Please note that awsetbg may be using display if it doesn't have any other options. Installing habak, feh, hsetroot or whatever should fix the problem (grep -A 1 wpsetters /usr/bin/awsetbg to see your options).

Autorun programs

awesome doesn't run programs set to autostart by the Freedesktop specification like GNOME or KDE. However, awesome does provide a few functions for starting programs (in addition to the Lua standard library function os.execute). To run the same programs on startup as GNOME or KDE, you can install dex from the AUR and then run that in your rc.lua:

os.execute"dex -a"

If you just want to set up a list of apps for awesome to launch at startup, you can create a table of all the commands you want to spawn and loop through it:

do
local cmds =
{
"swiftfox",
"mutt",
"consonance",
"linux-fetion",
"weechat-curses",
--and so on...
}
for _,i in pairs(cmds) do
awful.util.spawn(i)
end
end

(You could also run calls to os.execute with commands ending in '&', but it's probably a better idea to stick to the proper spawn function.)

To run a program only if it is not currently running, you can spawn it with a shell command that runs the program only if pgrep doesn't find a running process with the same name:

Using a different panel with awesome

If you like awesome's lightweightness and functionality but do not like the way its default panel looks, you can install a different panel. Just install xfce4-panel by issuing:

sudo pacman -S xfce4-panel

Of course any other panel will do as well.
Then add it to autorun section of your rc.lua (how to do that is written elsewhere on this wiki). You can also comment out the section which creates wiboxes for each screen (starting from "mywibox[s] = awful.wibox({ position = "top", screen = s })" ) but it isn't necessary. Any way do not forget to check your rc.lua for errors by typing

awesome -k rc.lua

Also you should change your "modkey+R" keybinding, in order to start some other application launcher instead of built in awesome. Xfrun4, bashrun, etc. Check the Application launchers section of Openbox article for examples. Don't forget to add

Transitioning away from Gnome3

If you'd like to get rid of GDM, make sure that your rc.conf DAEMONS list includes "dbus" (and "cupsd" if you have a printer). It's advisable to get a different login manager (like SLiM), but you can do things manually if you wish. That entails setting up your .xinitrc properly and installing something like devmon (AUR).

If you wan't to keep a few convenient systray applets and your GTK theme, append this to your rc.lua;

The problem in this case is that some xorg installations recognize keycode 115, but incorrectly as the 'Select' key. The above command explictly remaps keycode 115 to the correct 'Super_L' key.

Mod4 key vs. IBM ThinkPad users

IBM ThinkPads do not come equipped with a Window key (although Lenovo have changed this tradition on their ThinkPads). As of writing, the Alt key is not used in command combinations by the default rc.lua (refer to the Awesome wiki for a table of commands), which allows it be used as a replacement for the Super/Mod4/Win key. To do this, edit your rc.lua and replace:

modkey = "Mod4"

by:

modkey = "Mod1"

Note: Awesome does a have a few commands that make use of Mod4 plus a single letter. Changing Mod4 to Mod1/Alt could cause overlaps for some key combinations. The small amount of instances where this happens can be changed in the rc.lua file.

If you do not like to change the awesome standards, you might like to remap a key. For instance the caps lock key is rather useless (for me) adding the following contents to ~/.Xmodmap

clear lock
add mod4 = Caps_Lock

and (re)load the file.
This will change the caps lock key into the mod4 key and works nicely with the standard awesome settings. In addition, if needed, it provides the mod4 key to other X-programs as well.

Not confirmed, but if recent updates of xorg related packages break mentioned remapping the second line can be replaced by (tested on a DasKeyboard with no left Super key):

keysym Caps_Lock = Super_L Caps_Lock

Brasero

If Brasero doesn't detect your blank disks when started in Awesome, but works just fine when started in Gnome, try using

$ dbus-launch brasero

Eclipse: cannot resize/move main window

If you get stuck and cannot move or resize the main window (using mod4 + left/right mouse button) edit the workbench.xml and set fullscreen/maximized to false (if set) and reduce the width and height to numbers smaller than your single screen desktop area.

Note: workbench.xml can be found in: <eclipse_workspace>/.metadata/.plugins/org.eclipse.ui.workbench/ and the line to edit is <window height="xx" maximized="true" width="xx" x="xx" y="xx">.